a collaged image of burial mounds with a floating abstract shape

2021 Research Fellow: Ali Ismail Karimi

We are pleased to announce the second of our 2021 Holt/Smithson Foundation Research Fellowship awardees: Ali Ismail Karimi.

Ali Ismail Karimi’s Research Fellowship will focus on Robert Smithson’s 1966 works Grave Mounds with Object and Proposal for a Monument on the Red Sea and the relationship of Smithson’s work to the landscapes of the Middle East.

Ali is a Bahraini architect whose work explores social housing, public space, and the landscape of the GCC countries. He is, along with Hamed Bukhamseen, co-founder of Civil Architecture, an architecture office based in Manama and Kuwait City whose work has been shown in the Sharjah Architecture Triennale, Oslo Triennale, Seoul Biennale, and Amman Design Week. Together they curated the Kuwait Pavilion “Between East and West: A Gulf“ at the 2016 Venice Biennale.   

Our Research Fellowships aim to encourage new research on the work, ideas, and creative legacies of Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson. We look forward to thinking with Ali to expand and develop critical research on the works of Robert Smithson.

Robert Smithson, Grave Mounds with Object (1966)

Magazine photo collage

 6 x 7 5/8 in. (15.2 x 19.4 cm)

©Holt/Smithson Foundation, Licensed by VAGA at ARS, New York

Archived News

Spiral Jetty projected at Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin

Smithson's Spiral Jetty film on view at Neue Nationalgalerie

We are happy to share that Robert Smithson's film Spiral Jetty (1970) is currently on view at Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, Germany. This marks the first time that the recently completed high-resolution scan of Spiral Jetty has been shown in Europe. The film was digitized from the original 16mm film in 2024 by the Museum of Modern Art, New York, following the gift of this material by Holt/Smithson Foundation. 

A network of hot water pipes in an exhibition space

Nancy Holt: Power Systems opens at the Wex

We are delighted to announce that Nancy Holt: Power Systems is now on view at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus Ohio. The solo exhibition features the most extensive inquiry to date into Nancy Holt's studies of systems, focusing on her interactive site-responsive sculptural installations that expose the basic technological systems found in the built environment.